Games edited into movies: The 10 best video game films

Say what you will about the users of Reddit, but you can’t call them lazy. Whether they’re starting entire memes around certain subreddits or mobilizing for large-scale political action, Reddit users love to be active, and particularly they like variations on a theme.

The latest theme is quite a bit better than most — it’s video game cut scenes edited together into movies. Some games naturally lend themselves to this kind of gerrymandering (mostly those that don’t advance the story within gameplay). Taking into account the video and editing quality, along with the quality of the content itself, it’s remarkable how good some these little films can be. If nothing else, they envision a future in which in-engine movies (or “machinima”) could be a real option for indie filmmakers.

A new subreddit dedicated to these YouTube machinima films, r/gamesthemovie, already has hundreds of links and thousands of subscribers. Unfortunately, after just a few days on the case Reddit has already managed to dilute the best pieces out of visibility.

Don’t worry, we’ve done the work for you. Here are ten of the best, to get you started.

Injustice: Gods Among Us

This brand new fighting game comes from the developers of Mortal Kombat, and many are saying it’s the best use of the DC Comics universe that video games have ever seen. Reviews of the fighting system are more mixed, though — if you liked the new Mortal Kombat reboot, you’ll probably like Injustice. Not everybody likes fighting games, but everybody likes watching superheroes beat each other senseless. Injustice takes the Justice League into an alternate universe, and sets them against evil versions of themselves — including Supes!

This is a seriously well-made little movie, and since it’s a fighting game the cut-aways for gameplay are very unobtrusive. More than just about any game I can think of, the story mode of Injustice seems to be tailor made for this sort of treatment.

Uncharted 1-3

The video above is for the best of the three game-movies, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. See also, the great movie versions of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Note that these are all by the same editor, just one of the many dedicated fans putting many hours into adapting these things.

The Uncharted games are almost universally loved, and much of that comes from the audience’s affinity for the characters as for the gameplay. Much of the gameplay in the Uncharted series is almost as cinematic as cinematics themselves. This is particularly true in the third installment, with its experimental gameplay-cutscene mash-up portions. This video is able to preserve more of the original story by including some gameplay portions that don’t break the movie-like feel. These come in at around 2-3 hours apiece, a long, but not unmanageable adventure movie.